In my opinion you’re the best band to grace this world . W hich song do you still love banging out the most? Ska is a combined musical element of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. Jerry Dammers, founder member of the Specials, won't join Hall and co on their UK dates next month. They haven't seen eye to eye for quite some time. Horace: I think age has filtered a few things. The only thing I watch on television is the news, really. Terry was a wonderful husband and father and one of the kindest, funniest, and most genuine of souls. His music and his performances encapsulated the very essence of life... the joy, the pain, the humour, the fight for justice, but mostly the love.

The band were originally called The Automatics, before changing their name to The Coventry Automatics, The Specials AKA The Automatics and finally, in 1978, settling on The Specials. Lynval: Horace is stepping up now, he’s the man. Me, I love that sort of stuff from the 70s, like reggae style, you know? Gregory Isaacs. Meghan told King Charles there are TWO 'royal racists' who spoke about Archie's skin colour - while Harry asked his father: 'Don't you want to see your grandchildren any more?' in row over Frogmore Cottage, according to explosive new bookTraditional ska bands generally featured bass, drums, guitars, keyboards, and horns with sax, trombone and trumpet being most common. It comes after tributes flooded in for the music legend, who rose to fame with mega hits like Ghost Town, Gangsters and Too Much Too Young.

Terry Hall and Neville Staple performing with The Specials in 1980. Photograph: David Corio/Redferns Tributes have been pouring in following the death of lead singer of The Specials Terry Hall. He rose to fame as part of the Coventry band, who were pioneers of the ska scene in the UK. The reggae punk band's hits included Ghost Town, which spent three weeks at number one and ten weeks in the UK Top 40. Hall also released two studio albums and has collaborated with the likes Bananarama, Gorillaz and Lily Allen. Terry Hall with Lynval Golding and Neville Staple of the Fun Boy Three in 1982. Photograph: Steve Rapport/Getty Images)Hall’s post-Fun Boy Three career found him hopping between a bewildering variety of projects. In 1984 he formed the Colourfield with Toby Lyons and Karl Shale, which produced the Top 20 album Virgins and Philistines (1985) and a string of singles, of which only Thinking of You made much impression on the charts. Hall also undertook songwriting collaborations with Ian Broudie of the Lightning Seeds, before forming Terry, Blair and Anouchka in 1989, alongside Anouchka Grove and the American actress Blair Booth. The Specials hadn’t expected a smooth ride in Ireland, which they toured with their fellow ska act The Beat as support. With conflict raging in the North, British artists were generally reluctant to cross the Irish Sea. But Dammers had founded The Specials with the explicit goal of uniting divided British communities. Taking that message to Ireland seemed the logical next step. The trio were united by their fondness for cheesy 60s pop, and they covered the Captain & Tennille’s hit Love Will Keep Us Together, but their solitary album Ultra Modern Nursery Rhymes failed to chart, and a couple of singles did little better. “A lot of the stuff I’ve done is pretty much a wind-up,” Hall admitted. “Terry, Blair and Anouchka was completely taking the piss out of us and everyone else.”

Hall formed Fun Boy Three with his Specials bandmates Lynval Golding and Neville Staple. They also enjoyed chart success for several years, collaborating twice with girl band Bananarama, on It Ain’t What You Do (It’s the Way That You Do It) and Really Saying Something. Hall would also land a Top 10 single with Our Lips Are Sealed, a song he co-wrote with US indie star – and then romantic partner – Jane Wiedlin for her band the Go-Go’s.Building on the ska legacy of their former band, Fun Boy Three hit the UK Top 10 with their eponymous debut album (1982), and scored a Top 5 hit single with the infectiously catchy It Ain’t What You Do (It’s the Way That You Do it), its chart-friendliness much enhanced by the addition of the female trio Bananarama. Hall had brought them on board after seeing them featured in the Face magazine. In 2008, inspired by the Pixies’ reunion in 2004, Hall announced that he would be reforming the Specials for a tour and new music, albeit without founding member Jerry Dammers, who claimed he had been forced out.

If no one was going to rank 2019’s Encore or 2021’s Protest Songs over Specials and More Specials, they were far better than a naysayer might have suggested a Specials album would be without the input of Dammers, who after all had been the band’s architect, chief songwriter and de facto leader in their heyday. Both albums were admirably uninterested in simply warming over the old Specials sound: you got the feeling that the same restless spirit that had powered Hall’s solo career was behind their diversions into everything from funk to Frank Zappa covers. Hall's 2003 album The Hour of Two Lights features collaborations with a 12-year-old Lebanese girl, a blind Algerian rapper, a Syrian flautist and Polish gypsies. Hall formed Fun Boy Three with his Specials bandmates Staple and Lynval Golding. They also enjoyed chart success for several years, collaborating twice with girl band Bananarama, on It Ain’t What You Do (It’s the Way That You Do It) and Really Saying Something. Hall would also land a Top 10 single with Our Lips Are Sealed, a song he co-wrote with US indie star – and then romantic partner – Jane Wiedlin for her band the Go-Go’s. At Specials gigs we would have older skinhead men crying and opening up, and that was quite incredible because we were able to reach people that we wouldn’t otherwise have been able to reach,” says Langan. “A lot of fans of The Specials are men of a certain age who probably have never really opened up about their mental health before.”

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Terry: And after the Clash thing, that’s when we cut our hair, because we discovered what we should look like by doing that tour. And then you end up in Crawley with about 1,000 skinheads gobbing at you. Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Go’s and Hall’s former partner wrote that she was “gutted”. “He was a lovely, sensitive, talented and unique person. Our extremely brief romance resulted in the song Our Lips Are Sealed, which will forever tie us together in music history. Terrible news to hear this,” she tweeted. Hall was born in Coventry on 19 March 1959 to a family who predominantly worked in the car industry. He was an academically gifted child and also a noted footballer who was invited to try out for West Bromwich Albion – an opportunity his parents declined based on the inconvenience of travelling across the Midlands. After he sailed through the 11-plus exam, his parents also declined his place at a nearby grammar school. Horace: I’m sure there are some things that are great out there but I don’t know where to look for them. I haven’t got the time to spend a fruitless three hours ploughing through YouTube. It got to a point where I didn’t have a choice – and it’s done me so much good,” he said. “Talking about mental health problems is a conscious decision. It’s something I want to share with people.”